Chapter 7: Secret Tapings, Bickering Revolutionaries

If a detective has to investigate a crime, it is better to have the criminals fight among themselves than to have them united in revolutionary solidarity. When they bicker, they dish the dirt.

Only nine months after Victor Gerena stole $7.1 million, things got so bad among Los Macheteros that one member took the floor at a meeting to complain about himself -- twice. Minutes of the meeting show that:

``G. criticized Rom. for lateness. Gr. criticized Tino for incident related to Gabriel. Johnny criticizes himself for arriving late -- it was due to traffic jam. Johnny also criticized his attitude last Friday.''

The Macheteros argued about wacky publicity stunts. Should they issue a communique taking credit for the Wells Fargo robbery -- before they had smuggled all of the $7.1 million in cash out of New England? They didn't. Should they mail currency stolen in the robbery to newspapers? They did. Could the Cubans ship Victor M. Gerena, the group's inside man on the robbery, to Mexico to star in a propaganda video? They didn't.

Juan Segarra Palmer, an influential Machetero deeply involved in the robbery, even wrote a screenplay about it, a blatant breach of revolutionary security. In the movie, he was the hero who trained Gerena. Segarra showed it to his girlfriend. She told the FBI.

Los Macheteros were consumed by public relations.

``As a clandestine organization they are absolutely dependent on the media,'' an agent who investigated the group said. ``They need to convince the citizenry to take up arms.''

The group's founder, Filiberto Ojeda Rios, eventually took postcards to Cuba for Gerena to sign; the Macheteros scripted the propaganda message. It was important, in the Macheteros' view, that Gerena be remembered not as an armed robber, but as a patriotic ``expropriator.'' One of the postcards was delivered to The Courant on the first anniversary of the robbery. It told the newspaper to expect an explanation of what happened to the Wells Fargo money.

That came a month later in San Juan. Following instructions from an anonymous caller, a news service found a communique taking responsibility for the robbery folded beneath a bus stop bench.

``We want to report that comrade Gerena is in a perfect state of health and has joined the struggle which our people carry out to obtain our liberation,'' it said. ``Today we are able to say that the economic resources obtained are in a state of maximum security, according to our forces.''

*

But Los Macheteros' biggest arguments turned on the group's enormous new wealth. Who should control the money? How should it be spent? Who gets the weapons it will buy and what should they be used for? Eventually, independent-minded members of the group -- like Segarra -- began doing just what they pleased, ignoring the movement's vaunted, centralized decision-making process.

Los Macheteros split into factions. Doctrinaire Maoists bickered over money, ruined by the success of their own robbery.

The FBI wasn't complaining. From the perspective of investigating agents, the factional split was an invaluable source of intelligence. When the Macheteros deadlocked over who controlled what, they went to Cuba to lobby their respective Cuban handlers. The travel left no doubt about who in Cuba was behind Los Macheteros and, by extension, the violent Puerto Rican independence movement.

``The source of the friction was that Segarra was supposedly hoodwinking Ojeda with grandiose schemes about what to do with the money,'' an investigator said. ``Inside the organization they were just ripping apart over the money.''

Segarra, who recruited Gerena and to a large degree made the Wells Fargo robbery happen, got expelled from the organization twice, once for disregarding a central committee directive. Ojeda, the ``First Comrade in Charge'' of Los Macheteros and perhaps the most influential figure in the violent independence movement, was demoted.

Things are not always what they seem, though, in revolutionary politics. No matter what the rest of the Macheteros did to Ojeda, he remained the group's most influential member because of his long association with Cuba. He had been a member of the Cuban intelligence service, the DGI, since 1961. The Cubans called the shots.

By June 1984, at the height of the factional bickering, the FBI overheard Ojeda and Segarra discussing an upcoming trip to Cuba. They were concerned about control of the Wells Fargo money and about who in the Macheteros would get a shipment of weapons from Cuba. More important, Ojeda wanted to make sure the Cubans understood that the FBI had learned through confiscated Machetero records of the Cuban supporting role in Aguila Blanca -- ``White Eagle'' -- the code name for the robbery.

``They took those documents and they know what is our international policy,'' Ojeda told Segarra. ``They know we are linked, that we have contacts with Latin America, that we have contacts with the Cubans, and that in addition we have made Aguila Blanca because we discussed in the Central Committee what to do with the money in one of our last meetings.''

Ojeda wanted to give the Cubans a graceful opportunity to break off relations with Los Macheteros if they saw fit.

He sent Segarra to Mexico City to meet with Fernando Comas Perez, a senior officer in Cuba's Department of the Americas, an agency established to nurture ``national liberation movements'' in the Western Hemisphere. Comas had been expelled from Costa Rica not long before for coordinating Nicaragua's Sandinista guerrillas from the Cuban consulate in San Jose.

Segarra was to carry a letter from Ojeda that would contain a proposal for splitting the Wells Fargo money and the weapons.

``All the guns and machine guns, we get two and they take two,'' Ojeda said, highlighting what the letter would say. ``All the handguns, split them in half, including the hot ones.''

When he arrived in Mexico City, Segarra phoned the Cuban Embassy to confirm his appointment. He was instructed to meet Comas at La Casa de Maria.

La Casa de Maria is what Los Macheteros called the Washington Hotel. It is an ancient, pastel building 6 miles from the Cuban Embassy in the city's historic center, a good spot for people who don't want to be seen meeting. It is near the city's great central plaza and the country's government offices and the streets are mobbed by vendors and tourists and bureaucrats.

Segarra delivered the letter and reported that Comas wanted to meet with Ojeda personally. When Ojeda got back from his meeting he couldn't wait to tell Segarra what happened. To the FBI agents monitoring the conversation, he sounded relieved.

Ojeda said the Cubans decided he would be the winner in the Machetero factional split, in part because they were still so impressed by the way he blew up $40 million worth of Puerto Rican National Guard jets at an airbase in Carolina four years earlier. The weapons, training and other support that would be coming from ``over there,'' meaning Cuba, would go to Ojeda.

``The weapons will be delivered to you. The training will be given to you. That's what Comas told me,'' Ojeda told Segarra. ``And they gave me a list of all the packaged weapons they have over there. I have to make a trip to Cuba on the 16th. I wrote a report and I sent it with Comas, who left for over there today.''

*

There was one rub. The Cubans told Ojeda they were keeping $2.024 million, about a third of the money Gerena robbed. That meant that Ojeda and Segarra controlled about $2,960,000 and an opposing faction within Los Macheteros had about $2 million. While in Mexico City, Ojeda made a futile pitch to get the $2.024 million back.

``Comas said, `You can forget about that,' '' Ojeda complained.

The FBI had inserted its microphones into the very heart of the Machetero operation. Agents recorded 50 reels of conversations. They seized tens of thousands of documents. But the investigative work wasn't always smooth. Sometimes the Macheteros managed to dry-clean themselves. Sometimes the microphones went cold.

That set the FBI agents to bickering.

*

A rocket attack on the federal building had turned into an investigation of what, at the time, was the largest cash robbery in U.S. history. Senior Cuban government officers seemed to be conspirators. The FBI couldn't decide what to do next.

Should agents scoop up the unsuspecting Macheteros on the existing evidence? Or should the bureau keep the investigation running, using it as a tool to gather even more intelligence on what agents called Puerto Rican terrorists? Congress, after all, had decided the Puerto Rican independence movement was a threat to domestic security.

Both arguments had merit.

``By this stage there was constant pressure to take [the investigation] down, take it down,'' an agent involved in the case said. ``Here's where the real tug of war takes place. You have an organization that for 25 years has been bombing military targets, planting bombs, collaborating with Puerto Rican terrorist groups on the mainland.

``Wells Fargo was just one case. We wanted the global picture of Puerto Rican terrorism, which was a huge problem for the FBI.''

On the other hand, if the FBI did not act quickly, Los Macheteros could stage another violent attack and kill more people. Or, members could learn of the mounting evidence against them and scatter.

``There was a time when we lost everyone,'' the agent said. ``The trail just went cold here in Puerto Rico.''

Conversations being overheard through a microphone planted in Ojeda's car stopped. A bug planted in Segarra's home went cold.

The FBI did the only thing it could. Agents found Ojeda's abandoned car and staked it out. Agents spent interminable shifts staring at an empty car.

When they weren't griping about long, boring hours, the agents developed a grudging respect for Macheteros like Ojeda, who made great personal sacrifices for a cause to which he was deeply committed.

``There's no question about him being sincere,'' a former bureau supervisor said. ``This is a guy that used to move, I mean totally move away from a residence, leaving clothes, everything behind. Just wouldn't come home one day because he never wanted to take the chance that he was being followed.

``He would just pick a day and start over again. He would not see his wife for months and months and months at a time. He would never go out where it didn't take him 12 miles to go 2. He would never use the same phone twice. I mean he lived this.

``I used to tell the new people coming in on the squad, `Unless we're as dedicated as this guy, we're not going to make this case.' This guy was probably more dedicated toward what he did than a lot of the law enforcement people who were investigating.''

*

Eventually, one of the Macheteros picked up Ojeda's car and the FBI picked up the trail. In November 1984, after two months of silence, the conversation in Segarra's house also abruptly resumed.

The FBI listened in to a group of revolutionaries still giddy over its spectacular robbery.

Segarra had obtained a documentary film of the Wells Fargo job made by a Boston television station. He played it for an audience of his comrades. As the video opened with a film clip of a Wells Fargo armored truck, Segarra sputtered, ``Do you remember? Do you remember?''

When the picture focused on Gerena's battered green rental car, the narrator expounded on the weight -- more than half a ton -- and bulk of the stolen money.

``I almost herniated myself,'' one of the Macheteros cracked. ``I don't know how that man did that.''

``I don't know how that compa did what he did,'' another said.

``There were rehearsals,'' Ojeda answered. ``Practices.''

Two months later, in January 1985, Segarra staged a daring public relations stunt, something he hoped would cast Los Macheteros in a Robin Hood role. The group gave out $12,000 worth of toys to poor children on Bedford Street in Hartford and in a poor San Juan neighborhood. Later the same month, Los Macheteros launched a second rocket attack on another federal building in San Juan.

The screening of the documentary and the toy giveaway, at least, were celebratory moments. But the Macheteros' luck was running out.

The group's leadership was indicted by a federal grand jury in Hartford in August 1985. Segarra somehow managed to learn of the pending indictment. He collected his wife and children and fled to Mexico City.

He should have stayed there.

Memo: * THE COURANT'S INVESTIGATION

The Courant spent six months interviewing more than 50 people about links between Cuba, the violent wing of the Puerto Rican independence movement and the $7.1 million Wells Fargo robbery in West Hartford in 1983. Hundreds of pages of documents were reviewed, including U.S. Department of Justice memos, research by private groups, reports of Congressional inquiries, intelligence reports and confiscated documents prepared by Los Macheteros.

This eight-part series continues through Sunday. Tomorrow: Two kinds of
prison.